Immanuel

I used to think that when I grow up, I’ll have answers to big questions. I’ll know how to be, how to say the right things, have good answers. Now I’m coming to see that answers aren’t as important as faith. And faith, it seems, is ok with questions.

Faith means being relaxed about the reality that some questions don’t have answers. Faith means asking questions and not demanding answers. Faith means taking the next step that is only dim but has enough light so as to keep me from losing my footing.

These days, when I ask God hard, big questions, He doesn’t shed much light on them. He doesn’t explain everything. He only keeps telling me that He’s with me and everything is going to be ok. Faith is at ease with darkness and questions, not with answers, as I’d thought.

My friends buried their third baby yesterday, a boy this time. It doesn’t matter that they already have five beautiful girls. It helps that they are surrounded with loving friends, but it doesn’t take the pain away. The questions of loss and wasted pain and empty arms don’t have any answers. Not in this era of reality. There is a deeper reality, which is where faith rests. Meanwhile, we hold hands and cry and ask for miracles. Faith believes in miracles, and there are no small miracles. Each one is amazing. Maybe the biggest miracle of all is that He, Immanuel, is with us.

Can I see another’s woe, and not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another’s grief, and not seek for kind relief?
Can I see a falling tear, and not feel my sorrow’s share?
Can a father see his child weep, nor be with sorrow filled?
Can a mother sit and hear an infant groan, an infant fear?

No, no! never can it be! Never, never can it be!

And can He who smiles on all hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small bird’s grief and care, hear the woes that infants bear –
And not sit beside the nest, pouring pity in their breast,
And not sit the cradle near, weeping tear on infant’s tear?
And not sit both night and day, wiping all our tears away?

O no! never can it be! Never, never can it be!

He doth give His joy to all: He becomes an infant small,
He becomes a man of woe, He doth feel the sorrow too.
Think not thou canst sigh a sigh, and thy Maker is not by:
Think not thou canst weep a tear, and thy Maker is not near.
O! He gives to us His joy, that our grief He may destroy:
Till our grief is fled and gone He doth sit by us and moan.

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One thought on “Immanuel”

I keep coming back to this post and wanting to comment, but i don’t have anything to say except that i really really like this post. We get ourselves so tied up in knots trying to figure out our questions, when sometimes we’re supposed to just live and the and the answers will find us…maybe that’s simplistic, but thank you again, Anita, for your wise words! They give me hope.:)

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The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see – and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by the covering, cast them away as ugly, or heavy or hard. Remove the covering and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power.

Welcome it, grasp it, touch the angel’s hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, believe me, that angel’s hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Our joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty – beneath its covering – that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.

Courage, then, to claim it, that is all. But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are all pilgrims together, wending through unknown country, home.

And so, at this time, I greet you. Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.

—

This letter was written by Fra Giovanni Giocondo to his friend, Countess Allagia Aldobrandeschi on Christmas Eve, 1513.